KING OF THE CASTLE
Freshman guard, Spencer lead UConn over St. John’s
NEW YORK — For the first time since he sat out the latter part of the 2021-22 season as a redshirt freshman, Alex Karaban watched a game from the bench dressed in street clothes.
Karaban, the “brain center of the program,” “the ultimate problem-solver,” per coach Dan Hurley, also happens to average 14.5 points, shoot nearly 40 percent from 3 and was a key starter for last season’s national championship squad.
It wasn’t exactly “no Karaban, no problem,” but the UConn men’s basketball team rebounded from a halftime deficit on Saturday and ran away for a 77-64 win over St. John’s before a sellout at Madison Square Garden.
“All things considered,” Hurley noted, “I probably didn’t imagine we could play as well and as tough as we did without Alex.”
But top-ranked UConn (20-2, 10-1 Big East) dominated the Red Storm on the boards, shot the ball well from 3-point land and the foul line, and got “next-manup” efforts from several players. Three in particular.
Cam Spencer knocked down five 3-pointers and finished with a game-high 23 points. Tristen Newton flirted with his latest triple-double and wound up with 18 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists. And Stephon Castle continued to play well beyond his years.
Castle, a true freshman, notched a career-best scoring effort for the second straight game with 21 points, hitting both his 3pointers and all five of his free throws. The 6-foot-6 guard was also forced to guard Joel Soriano, the Red Storm’s 6-11 center and leading scorer, late in the game with big men Donovan Clingan and Samson Johnson both saddled with foul trouble. Soriano
They have lost five players for the season — the most in Auriemma's 39 seasons here — and have played with a nine-player roster for almost a month. This time, though, no one is coming back so the Huskies will have to play the hand that they have.
But somehow something is different. As No. 11 UConn gets ready to take on St. John's Sunday in its annual Play4Kay Pink Game at Gampel Pavilion, there doesn't seem to be the mental and physical drain that there was a year ago and there's something left in the tank to make things interesting the next several weeks.
“Even though we've had the one game against Notre Dame that we weren't at our best and didn't play to our best, we're still riding the wave of keeping the momentum going and keeping the energy high,” UConn forward Aaliyah Edwards said on Saturday. “During this time of the year you do rely on being more mentally tough. Physically, everyone is in the same boat. You're tired, we've played 22 and fatigue will kick in. But as long as we stay focused and play with effort it will take us far.”
The Huskies (18-4, 10-0 Big East) lead second-place Creighton by two games in the regular-season race
with eight games to go with third-place St. John's (14-9, 8-3) another half-game back. UConn defeated St. John's 92-49 at UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y., on Jan. 13.
February is usually the time that UConn starts playing its best. Since 1994, the Huskies are 231-19 (.924) in February games and that includes the 6-3 mark from a year ago.
Auriemma knows his team has to get better from February until the postseason begins and he believes it will.
“Games are going to present themselves where we don't have an answer for what's going on,” Auriemma said. “I said this 30 years ago, (former Kansas City Chiefs coach) Hank Stram's great line: ‘To win it all, you have to have it all.' I've coached teams that had it all. So there will be games this year, and there already have been, that we will not be able to change how the game is being played.
“The only thing we can do is work really, really hard at the things we're already good at and we have to be able to do those things every game.”
Even with five players out with season-ending injuries and having played with a nine-player roster for a month, Auriemma has been able to keep the minutes for his starters — particularly for guards Paige Bueckers and Nika Mühl — within reason. Bueckers set a school record for most minutes per
game her freshman year with Mühl beating that mark a year ago.
One key has been the minutes from freshmen KK Arnold and Ashlynn Shade along with what redshirt freshman Ice Brady gives them off the bench.
“Can we get better? I'm not sure,” Auriemma said. “But I do know that having KK, Ice, and Ash, you look at them and ask, ‘Have they played to their max?' No. There's a lot of room for them to get better and that's where we as a team can get better if we continue to play the way we've been playing. I don't see the tired factor there yet. I think we've been through the hard stretch. The schedule from a travel point of view helps us.”
Arnold and Shade may hit that freshman wall at some point but it hasn't happened yet. All they've done for the Huskies is step up and become the leading candidates for Big East Freshman of the Year.
“You just try to take it one game at a time,” Arnold said. “You don't look ahead and just stay in the moment. My teammates help me, the veterans and Paige ... They help all of us freshmen and remind us that it is a long season and we need to take it day-byday and keep getting better.”
The schedule has also been kind to UConn as it has balanced with travel and days between games. A year ago, the Huskies
had to play five games in 12 days in late January and it took a toll.
UConn has nine regularseason games left: five at home and four on the road. The only game outside the Eastern time zone is at DePaul.
“We had a lot of scheduling issues last year that have gotten take care of this year,” Auriemma said. “The conference did a much better job of balancing things out. And that we've played so much better in so many ways in our league, it's given us a chance to rest some guys. We'll see how long this can last.”
A year ago, St. John's beat UConn at the XL Center after losing to the Huskies by 30 at UBS Arena so they know they can't take the Red Storm for granted.
A win could move UConn back into the Associated Press Top 10. A victory would give Auriemma 1,199 wins and allow him to go for the 1,200-plateau Wednesday against Seton Hall at the XL Center in Hartford.
But it's one game at a time.
“Everyone is stepping up and playing to their strengths and going at 150 percent,” Edwards said. “That's all Coach asks us to do. Things aren't what they were if we had a full roster. But people are putting in the effort so when it comes to games we can execute and do the things we need to do.”